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Last December 2009, I attended INSEAD’s Social Entrepreneurship Programme in Singapore.

As part of ISEP’s ongoing efforts to create a vibrant community as well as advance the field, they are organizing their 4th Conference, aptly entitled ‘Social Entrepreneurship for Social Change’ in Istanbul, Turkey this coming June 4.

Hans Wahl, Senior Associate Director has extended an invitation to join – as well as participate on the Leadership Roundtable (which will be held adjacently to the conference) -  and as such I will be excitedly attending

You might want to join too! Check out the official conference website for more details.

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“SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP FOR SOCIAL CHANGE” Conference

Today, social issues are being tackled through socially innovative approaches instead of traditional philanthropic methods.

Social entrepreneurship entails a comprehensive approach, which is both innovative and realistic, dealing with the core of social issues and trying to change conditions that create them; contrary to temporary solutions provided by philanthropic endeavors.

INSEAD Social Enterpreneurship Program (ISEP) is organizing an international social entrepreneurship conference and alumni meeting every year since its establishment in 2006. The 2010 Social Entrepreneurship Conference that will take place in Istanbul is ISEP’s 4th conference.

These international conferences are organized by ISEP and local partners. This year’s organization is a partnership between ISEP, three ISEP Alumni from Turkey, and Sabancı University (the details of organizing institutions and committee members are under the heading of “About Us” in the web).

The Social Entrepreneurship Conference includes interactive panel discussions and keynote speeches on major opportunities and challenges faced by social entrepreneurs around the world.

Inspiring speakers with compelling stories will definitely impress the attendees!

As the organizing committee, we believe that this conference is a great instrument to publicize the importance of Social Entrepreneurship in Turkey, discover new ways to tackle social problems and bring innovative models into light.

Thus, we INVITE you to join this remarkable event in the 4th of June 2010 that is the first international conference on “Social Entrepreneurship” in Turkey.

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The Videos from the 1st TEDx Manila are now online!

Posting my video from my talk on the Social Business Revolution Congratulations to TED fellow Rom Feria and team!

Unfortunately I had problems with the microphone so audio’s not ideal;

Sharing my presentation via slideshare as well below. I’ll find time to make a slidecast to make it more comprehensible :

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PinoyME Foundation – the Pinoy MicroEnterprise initiative founded by former President Corazon Aquino – just held a stakeholder’s conference on the theme ‘MAINSTREAMING MICRO’.

The invitation from Dan Songco, President and CEO of PinoyME, read :

“While microfinance and microenterprise development continues to evolve, the microentrepreneurship sector is faced with growing opportunities and pressing issues that must be addressed in order to fulfill microentrepreneurship’s promise in helping the poor move out of poverty.

The Philippine Microentrepreneurship Stakeholders Conference aims to assess the current situation and discuss a proposed policy agenda derived from an extensive survey of literature and roundtable discussions of policy experts and institutions. The conference aims to gather a broad constituency behind this proposed agenda in the hope of promoting collaboration among the different stakeholders in the sector and put microentrepreneurship in the mainstream of Philippine social and economic concerns.”

This theme of transitioning microentrepreneurs from micro to SME is at the core of the work we do in Hapinoy, and as such I decided to attend. The conference was well-represented with more than 100+ attendees from stakeholders in academe, donor/funding agencies, development organizations, corporate foundations, microfinance institutions, social enterprises, commercial banks, and government institutions. There were even quite a few familiar faces whom I last saw in the Eradicating Poverty Conference held last November in Cebu.

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Program Schedule of the Mainstreaming Micro Conference

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The crux of the conference was a proposed Policy Agenda on the state of the microfinancing industry – as well as policy implications on it scaling across the country. It was authored by core members of the PinoyME research consortium, which is strengthening its knowledge base and research on the sector.

The Policy Framework has four major components : Progress (increasing market opportunities for microentrepreneurs), Impact (increasing MFIs’ impact on reducing poverty), Access (increasing access of poor people to financial services), and Outreach (increasing outreach of microfinance to rural, hard to reach areas).

These (4) major areas were processed in groups through consultative workshops and dialogue.

I myself joined Workshop #4 on Progress, wherein we tackled the question “How can we enable microfinance clients to graduate into small enterprises?”. The group was moderated by Mr. Jerry Pacturan, Executive Director of PDAP (Philippine Development Assistance Program) with discussants Lanny Nanagas, Chit Juan, Jerry Clavecillas, and Vic Roaring.

There were some common threads that lined our group’s discussion.

One thread was the reality that not all microentrepreneurs want to transition into small entrepreneurs. This is something we’ve certainly experienced in Hapinoy and as such, we have (2) levels — 1. Hapinoy Community Stores that act as the depot/distributor/leader to 2. the smaller Hapinoy Stores. Typically, our CS owners are those that have more drive, ambition, and vision both for themselves and their businesses. They also provide role modeling and a provide leverage in multiplying our impact.

Another thread was the model of development itself — should we be focusing on providing microfinancing/microentrepreneurship, or is it better to put energy behind SME’s and job creation? I personally think that it should be a balance of both. Job creation would be the relatively easier path; but it is microenterprise development that could provide fertile ground for those diamonds in the rough that will eventually become small-to-medium-sized businesses. Also, microfinancing provides the larger outreach that SME’s might not be able to scale towards.

Another discussion thread was the role of Microfinancing Institutions vis-a-vis Business Development Services. Should MFI’s be doing both? Or should they be entirely separate institutions? Our experience with our MFI partner CARD is that they are able to straddle both, although we at MicroVentures are also fulfilling additional BDS services for them.

The last thread – and the main point that i was really driving at – is creating an environment that cultivates and supports microenterprises. On this point, my main belief is that we need infrastructure and institutions that are microenterprise-friendly, as the current environment is decidedly not so. We need better policies for taxation on microenterprises as they integrate into the formal economy; We also need physical infrastructure – whether it be access to roads, energy, and market linkages. While access to financing has been cracked by the MFI’s, it is this whole other slew of needs that also have to be addressed if we do indeed hope to mainstream the micro.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to finish the conference but I’m most certain that the conference went well. More details on PinoyME’s website.

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As a staunch advocate of social entrepreneurship in the country, the Ateneo School of Government is yet again hosting Forum on Best Practices in Social Entrepreneurship on 17 April 2010, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. in Ateneo Professional Schools, Rockwell Center, Makati City.

This forum aims to instill deeper appreciation of social entrepreneurship as an innovative means to solve social problems using entrepreneurial skills. It will feature several successful social enterprises in the Philippines and around the world through the inspiring stories of individuals who envisioned a new and better Philippines for Filipinos.

Registration fee is only P2, 500.00. Less 15% will be given to those who will register on or before 31 March 2010. Groups of three or more will get 10% discount and 20% discount for those who sign-up early as a group.

If you would like to make a reservation and register, please send us an email with your complete name and contact information to cristylsenajon@yahoo.com or call 426-5657.

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Before anything else, let go of your easily-prickable Pinoy pride for 15 minutes and read (or re-read) Nick Joaquin’s A Heritage of Smallness.

In this influential essay, the one-time National Artist for Literature holds up a mirror to the Filipino Soul and eschews our love affair with all things small :

“Society for the Filipino is a small rowboat: the barangay. Geography for the Filipino is a small locality: the barrio. History for the Filipino is a small vague saying: matanda pa kay mahoma, noong peacetime. Enterprise for the Filipino is a small stall: the sari-sari. Industry and production for the Filipino are the small immediate searchings of each day: isang kahig, isang tuka. And commerce for the Filipino is the smallest degree of retail: the tingi.”

He further builds his case, noting the Philippine aversion of going for big, bold risks.

Whereas other countries have the grandeur of millenia-old pyramids, colloseums, or castles, our landscape reveals … invisible traces of the nipa hut, obliterated in months and years, not centuries.

This seeming absence of ambition in our DNA is a reinforcement of Joaquin’s three theories :

“First: that the Filipino works best on small scale–tiny figurines, small pots, filigree work in gold or silver, decorative arabesques. The deduction here is that we feel adequate to the challenge of the small, but are cowed by the challenge of the big.

Second: that the Filipino chooses to work in soft easy materials–clay, molten metal, tree searching has failed to turn up anything really monumental in hardstone. Even carabao horn, an obvious material for native craftsmen, has not been used to any extent remotely comparable to the use of ivory in the ivory countries. The deduction here is that we feel equal to the materials that yield but evade the challenge of materials that resist.

Third: that having mastered a material, craft or product, we tend to rut in it and don’t move on to a next phase, a larger development, based on what we have learned. In fact, we instantly lay down even what mastery we already posses when confronted by a challenge from outside of something more masterly, instead of being provoked to develop by the threat of competition.”

While there’s most certainly truth in this – denial would only be delusional and unproductive – it’s time to reframe Joaquin’s thoughts and put them in a new historical perspective; Most especially since this so-called heritage of smallness is a jiu-jitsu move whose time, I believe, has finally come.

The transformation spurred by the Industrial Revolution saw unprecedented growth and scale driven by cookie-cutter replication;  This great leap forward was facilitated by large-scale organizations and systems : huge industrial factories and their assembly lines, massive one-size-fits-all educational systems, sprawling country-wide infrastructure – all supported by financial institutions that both oiled and churned the giant wheels of commerce.

Just consider the following examples :

The tri-media attack of Television, Radio, and Print became national – even global – platforms, easily influencing and swaying popular opinion at a massive scale.

Big Business got bigger, while the small guys got smaller. The latter would eventually became roadkill for the ever-burgeoning class of multinational corporations : Wal-Mart dries up the Neighborhood Mom & Pops, Starbucks engulfs the local coffee shops, Barnes and Noble kills the community-based bookstores.

The so-called First World Countries’ GDP’s would balloon and dwarf those in the Third World at mind-boggling ratios. These countries even formed an Industrialized Nations’ Club called the G8 – with their collective financial institutions pretty-much dictating the pace of the World Economy.

But something peculiar happened at the turn of the century.

The large institutions started teetering, and are now on their way into becoming dinosaur-obsolete – their 20th century innards simply being torn apart by 21st Century Realities.

The seemingly impenetrable consolidation of media became oh-so-vulnerable. Professionally produced shows on Television compete with amateurish two-minute antics on YouTube; Internet radio is replacing the radio station as we know it; And every week we extol eulogies on yet another magazine and/or newspaper’s death, as they become replaced by blogs, websites, and online forums.

Even Big Businesses are in quite a disarray. Wal-Mart survives through its ongoing reinvention; Starbucks is now buckling under its own weight – in fact, its new experiments are going community-based as unbranded local shops; Amazon.com and a myriad of niche online booksellers continues to threaten the very economics of brick-and-mortar stores. And don’t get me started on the really easy pickings, The Banks That Were Too Big To Fail, But Did.

On that note, the Global Financial Crisis of ’08-’09 swept across the industrialized nations – their financial institutions becoming a worldwide domino of economic disaster. Tackling this dangerous web was no longer something that the G8 could address in isolation, and so to deal with it they had to involve an expanded group, the G20.

The most-developed, largest countries which just a decade ago seemed invulnerable flirted with disaster and economic depression.

This breakdown in large 20th century institutions certainly has me thinking : maybe Being Big isn’t that – pun intended – big a deal anymore.

From 2010 onwards, maybe it’s time to revisit the other side of the spatial spectrum and get reaquainted with the virtues of smallness.

—

It’s no secret that The Rise of Smallness is being fueled by the Internet’s overarching disruptive shadow. Call it what you will – Wikinomics, The Groundswell, The Long Tail, an Army of Davids – the fact is that no other time in history has power been so democratized and redistributed – from multinational companies into a mosaic of startups; from large institutions into the hands of collective individuals.

Indulge me now by sharing with you Exhibits A & B  (both hailing from the same source : uber-brain-food magazine, Wired’s Issue 17.06 – a major, major influence on my thinking with regards to this matter).

Exhibit A is the article, The New New Economy : More Startups, Fewer Giants, Infinite Opportunity -  which showcases the decline in number of the Megacorporations and the viral proliferation of an Ecosystem of Startups.

Exhibit B is more a mindbend, if you will.  Kevin Kelly talks about The New Socialism : Global Collectivist Society is Coming Online – and this is where it makes the leap from mildly interesting to extremely interesting.

Because the secret sauce isn’t really in The Small per se; it’s the aggregation of what I can only call as ‘The Many-Small’ into an almost sentient-network, mimicking swarm intelligence.  And so it’s not just the empowered individual which is the focus of the matter, but rather the groups of individuals bound together, moving from Web 2.0 Guru Clay Shirky‘s hierarchy of sharing, cooperation, collaboration, and collective action.

What does this all have to do with the Philippines?

Because for better or for worse, Nick Joaquin is absolutely right. We are indeed a nation of smallness, divided across a myriad of 7,107 islands.

From sari-sari stores to barangays, from nipa huts to sachets, from farming small plots of land to microfinancing – it is the small that dominates the Filipino landscape.

But if we mirror the Internet model, then we can arrive at the logical conclusion that we’re sitting on a goldmine. And it’s not in The Small. It’s in harnessing The Many-Small.

Our work in Hapinoy is an extremely relevant example to the thinking here. The smallest, minutest unit of retail – the humble sari-sari store – by far dominates the number of retail outlets in the country. While there may be a few thousand supermarkets and groceries nationwide, there are almost 700,000 sari-sari stores sprawling every nook and cranny of the archipelago. 700,000! Numerically, that’s more than 90% of all retail.

So individually, the sari-sari store is too micro to make a dent in the universe. But as a Hapinoy network, the aggregation and alignment of hundreds of thousands of sari-sari stores represents a massively untapped economic opportunity. It’s most definitely not Wal-Mart, but it is a powerful force in its own right.

What makes this model more resilient is that its not solely reliant on a centralized nervous system. Close one Big Box Hypermarket and your business goes under; Close a couple of hundred sari-sari stores and you’ve got an equal number of stores that can willingly take its place. It’s self-healing on the fringes, with a high tolerance for fallouts.

Now extend this Hapinoy model into other Filipino Many-Small realities.

Micro-Businesses.

Barangays.

Public Schools.

Agricultural Plots of Land.

Seven. Thousand. One Hundred. Seven. Islands.

And then add layers of technology to mesh them together – wireless networks, mobile communications, the web as a platform – and the possibilities just effortlessly, exponentially grow.

Let me make it clear that this I am not proposing mere consolidation; The model is hinged on networking and connection. Every point in the mesh retains its individuality – every Hapinoy Store retains its freedom and ownership – it can link and de-link with the chain. But whenever it is plugged-in, then it benefits from the power of the unified group.

—

To end, the challenge of Nick Joaquin wasn’t only in the Filipino’s limited capacity of churning out small things; It was also very much a commentary on the smallness of our thinking – of our lack of ambition, of grandness, of boldness.

But just because we’ve got small things doesn’t mean we have to think small.

The fact of the matter is that we probably won’t be building grand pyramids anytime soon;

But the good news is that we might not even have to.

We can embrace our heritage of smallness;

We can embrace the small things this heritage has given us.

Because at this point in history, we can make enormously gigantically big things out of them.

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Sharing with you Hapinoy’s Music Video, “Bagong Araw”.

The serendipitous story here is that last year, Bam attended a concert wherein our Head of Field Operations RG Salazar was performing with his band, Project Fusion. One of the songs they sang was “Bagong Araw” – to international friends, that’s translated as “Brand New Day”. Bam liked the song so much that he asked RG’s permission to use it as a Hapinoy Song, to which the band gladly consented to.

“Bagong Araw” was actually written by the band’s vocalist, Pabsy Pabalan; And the serendipitous twist here is that Pabsy would eventually apply to join the Hapinoy family – and is in fact, now in charge of our Communications. One of her key achievements has been the relaunch of our Hapinoy website, which has never been more true to our spirit.

Eventually, the song gave birth to this music video – thanks of course to our partner-sponsor, Smart, as well as Manny Angeles whose video production company made the MTV.

Enjoy!

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